Developers on a big roll – but still far too poor to provide truly affordable housing

Owl believes that the Conservative government’s policy is to destroy affordable and social housing in favour of private renting, where housing benefit is payable direct to landlords and councils have no responsibilities for their poorest residents and their families.

Current “affordable housing” provided by developers (at 20% less than average prices on the same site) are actually much smaller houses, with basic and/or cheap fittings on the least pleasant parts of sites – e.g. near main roads, parking areas, etc and require such discounting.

“[Persimmon] reported an 8 percent revenue rise, and said that the sales rate was up 15 percent between July and December, confounding the notion that the Brexit vote could take the wind out of property-related companies.

However, the stock remains down 9.2 percent since the referendum last June.

Sector peers also rose on Thursday, with Taylor Wimpey (TW.L) and Barratt Developments (BDEV.L) both up nearly 3 percent.

“This latest positive update from a sector major adds to yesterday’s positive UK PMI Construction read and improving mortgage approvals data while the UK mortgage market remains highly competitive and government initiatives supportive,” said Mike van Dulken, head of research at Accendo Markets.

“Although house price data does remain notoriously mixed, the post-Brexit crash foreseen by many simply hasn’t materialised and prices held up remarkably well”.